In which I can admit I'm wrong

I'm about a week late with this, but I had once joked that despite their respective decades of hard living, Leonard Bernstein would end up living a longer life than Keith Richards for the sole reason that in classical music one can't smoke onstage. (Along with the constant smoking, Lenny was also into booze and pills, and generally didn't take great care of himself.) Well, on February 4, Keith made it to day 26,346 (72 years, 1 month, 2 weeks, 2 days) moving past the maestro. Credit where credit is due, I suppose.

Top 2 for December 17, 2013

In Nativitatem Domini Canticum H. 416 by Marc-Antoine Charpentier performed by William Christie and Les Arts Florissants.

That's H. 416 recorded on Erato in 2000, not H. 414 of similar title recorded by the same forces on Harmonia Mundi in 1982, also essential. Both the composition and performance have such an ease and inevitability, you feel you could just sit write down and write it like you might make a grocery list, or get up and sing it like you sing “Roxanne” in the shower. Like the best Christmas music, it acknowledges the need for salvation before the arrival of salvation (see also Honnegger's Christmas Cantata).